Backstory: Conflicting Spiritual Paths

I have always led a very spiritual life. At age 5 or 6, I felt called to be a Nun. I remember feeling transported in Church. By the age of 11, I began to question the Catholic church, but kept my deep Spiritual nature. By fourteen I was reading about Hitler and the Holocaust, the history of the Christian Church, and Eastern religions.

My strong interest in spirituality led me to studying it in college, both when right out of high school as a minor then after returning to college in later life to finish my degree. My BA is in Religious Studies. My journey has been long and circuitous, always following my inner knowing and experience. I've ended up with a personal spirtuality based primarily in Mysticism and the body.

My ex grew up in a Protestant household that did not have a strong connection to Spirit or religion. He had no interest there. When we got together at our very young ages of 20 and 21, here I was on this intensely spiritual Path and there he was, kind of...not. We got pregnant without planning. It hit him much harder than it did me. While neither one of us was ready for the responsibility of a child, he REALLY wasn't ready. About a year and a half after she was born, I started to be a midwife, he graduated from college and was faced with himself and the life he had created.

He had to find a job. I think he felt in the middle of a huge existential crisis. He was washing windows and doing janitorial work. one woman took a liking to him and gave him a "track." He read it. One night while driving from one job to another, he told me he had a vision. That vision told him to become a Christian. He felt "saved."

This was not good news for who I was at the time. I had been studying radical feminist thought and had felt drawn to the Earth Based traditions, one of which was Wicca, the Irish form of paganism generally referred to today as "Witchcraft." It's a Path that honors the Earth and sees everything infused with Spirit.

He saw me as "worshiping the Devil." I saw him as "The Patriarchy," the cause of everything evil on the planet: misogeny, raping of the Earth, environmental decay, immoral government built on greed, child pornography, war, politically based famine.

The two Paths did not mix well.